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him Joinville’s warning, but the secretary of state did not want to hear bad news—especially from McClellan, whom he disliked. He resented having his expertise questioned and told the general that his information about England was based on ignorance. “I said I thought I was right,” recorded McClellan; “he again contradicted me & I told him that the future would prove the correctness of my story.” McClellan left, inwardly cursing that “so weak and cowardly a thing should now control our foreign relations.”11 Seward’s unfounded optimism that Britain would not dare make a protest thoroughly depressed Lord Lyons. “I am so worn out with the never ending labour of keeping things smooth,” Lyons wrote to Lord Russell on November 22. He had heard about Seward’s reaction and was beginning to wonder whether the policy of keeping quiet was “leading these people to believe that they may go all lengths with us with impunity.… I am sometimes half tempted to wish that the worst may have come already,” he confessed. “However I do not allow this feeling to influence my conduct and I have done nothing which can in the least interfere with any course which you may take concerning the affair of the ‘Trent.’ ”12

There was apparently limited discussion of the Trent affair at the cabinet meeting on November 24. Lincoln agreed that they would wait to hear Britain’s response before the government publicly committed itself on the legality of the seizure. No one remarked on the South’s euphoric reaction to the capture or questioned why its press was so quick to agree that the British had been given a studied blow. President Jefferson Davis had laid particular stress on the insult in a speech to the Confederate Congress on November 18. “These gentlemen were as much under the jurisdiction of the British Government upon that ship and beneath its flag as if they had been on its soil,” he said. Wilkes’s act was no different from a kidnapping on Piccadilly.13

After the cabinet meeting, Seward realized that it would be impossible to keep Charles Francis Adams in limbo for two or three more weeks. He composed a dispatch on November 27 saying as little as possible about the affair except to admit that Wilkes had acted without orders. The administration was waiting for Britain’s reaction, he informed Adams. That night, the apotheosis of Wilkes continued. The governor of Massachusetts spoke at a public banquet in his honor, praising him for giving “illustrious service” to the war and for humbling the “British lion” to boot. Gideon Welles ignored Lincoln’s injunction to wait and published a letter of congratulation to Wilkes, which, fortunately, mentioned that the captain had acted on his own initiative.

When Congress reconvened on December 2, Lincoln did not specifically refer to Wilkes in his speech, but the House of Representatives passed a vote of thanks and awarded him a gold medal. In Boston, Anthony Trollope was forced to pronounce on the subject, though he felt there was more farce than force to the affair. “Who ever before heard of giving a man glory for achievements so little glorious?” he asked. Trollope was amused when people quoted obscure legal authorities at him in order to justify the Trent affair. “ ‘Wheaton is quite clear about it,’ one young girl said to me. It was the first I had ever heard of Wheaton, and so far was obliged to knock under,” he wrote. “All the world, ladies and lawyers, expressed the utmost confidence in the justice of the seizure.” Yet, Trollope added, “it was clear that all the world was in a state of the profoundest nervous anxiety on the subject.”14 As the countdown began for the arrival of newspapers from London, the press began to change its tone as editorials asked: What if the British lion roared back?

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The “lion” had been roaring since November 27. On Palmerston’s orders, the secretary of state for the colonies, the Duke of Newcastle, advised the governor-general of Canada to prepare for war: “Such an insult to our flag can only be atoned by the restoration of the men who were seized,” he wrote, “and with Mr.